World of Speed Curator Ron Huegli lands the job he trained for all his life

The roads of  Ron Huegli’s life are all a quarter- mile long and all of them brought him to one place, at about 200 mph. Huegli is the curator of the World of Speed Museum in Wilsonville, Oregon, which is due to open April 24, 2015, but he’s been training for the job for 49 years—that’s his age.

The affable Huegli grew up on a horse ranch outside Hillsboro, Oregon, but he was taken to his first drag race at 3 months old, in the back of a Superstock Dodge his dad had bought on his release from the Navy. “I think I was a lost cause,” he remembers. My baby books say, “All Ronnie likes is cars. I grew up reading Hot Rod magazine in first grade. No Dr. Seuss for me. Mom threw up her hands and walked away.”

From about 1970, funny cars started their climb to the top, Huegli said. “Top fuel dragsters were kings of the sport, but funny cars brought people to the track because of the show they put on. Funny cars didn’t have their own class until 1969.”

Huegli hung out with Ziegler and Kenny Goodell through the 1970s, then in 1979, after inventing a way to grow hydroponic alfalfa sprouts, Huegli’s dad went racing. He bought Goodell’s last dragster and began building a turbocharged Chevy Monza funny car. But the work went slowly and Huegli more often found himself helping Roger Orr and his son Ronnie work on their car.

Meanwhile, Huegli completed his father’s funny car and the two went racing. In the late 1990s, Huegli hooked up with Al Hartley in the Midwest and he became the “fly-in-guy” on Hartley’s Top Fuel car. Hartley had a computer company and paid his own way. Huegli credits Hartley with teaching him what it takes to race. “Unload the car, work on it, take it to the line and run it. If it breaks, fix it and do it all over again. Don’t just be a one-and-done,” Huegli said.

By 2006, Huegli was done with drag racing, but in 2007 he was introduced to Dave Bany, who wanted to go nostalgia racing. Coincidentally, Huegli got a call from Ronnie Orr, who told him the Orr’s original Monza funny car was for sale in Canada. It had 14 coats of paint on it but the original spider was still on the hood underneath, and the trick weight bar and wheelie bar were the same ones jointly built by Huegli and Ronnie Orr. Huegli and Bany bought the car and discovered they both shared a Tiki fixation—hence the car’s “Tiki Warrior” name and artwork.

At this point, top alcohol cars cost over $300,000 a year to run, said Huegli, but there were a lot of “men without a country”—cars that still raced, but weren’t fast enough for top flight anymore. Huegli and Bany formed their own Northwest BB/FC class, which currently boasts 14 competitive cars, all running mid-6-sec. in the quarter mile at over 200 mph. Huegli ran the organization until 2013 when he quit to start working on the World of Speed museum.

Immortalized in Die-Cast

In 2009, Huegli took the Tiki Warrior down to Bakersfield, California, for the March Meet, driving 17 hours to be early so he could get a spot close to the start.

“The Top Fuel cars were all in the front row, but they waved me in and said do you want to be part of press day? The reporters came up and asked questions, then this one guy said: ‘I represent Mattel Toys and we’re just finishing up our Hot Wheels series of funny cars and we’d like the Tiki Warrior to be the last one. ’ So we did a deal. I thought I’d buy some for kids, but we couldn’t find them anywhere. I guess they only made about 20,000. Then Mattel called and asked, ‘Would you like to buy a case?’ We got 144, so we have to give them away carefully.”

“But look,” Huegli said, “here’s my name on the roof. I gave one to my daughter so she could show it to my ex-wife, who thought I’d never amount to anything playing with cars. I have to say I have my dream job, taking care of all these cars and explaining their history.”

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